


Something Ridiculous

by Araine



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Episode 60 Spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7588831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araine/pseuds/Araine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once a year you have to do something ridiculous," Percy said, or: Percy tricks Vex into furthering a Whitestone tradition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Ridiculous

**Author's Note:**

> Written immediately after Episode 60 and transferred over from my Tumblr.

“Percival,” Vex’ahlia says, looking out over the battlements of Whitestone Castle at the truly ridiculous number of people dressed in colorful masks and costumes with various dogs and horses milling about the grounds in the predawn air. When Percy woke her at nearly full dark for ‘something important’, this was perhaps the last sight Vex was expecting. “Percy, what is this?”

“Ah,” Percy says, shifting from one foot to the other. “Yes. This. So– you remember back when I made you a baroness, back in Syngorn?”

“Yes, I remember quite clearly, it was a very nice gesture,” Vex says, glancing suspiciously at Percy. “But I don’t see what that has to do with– the lost mummers down there. They are lost, right? They’re not here to like, petition me or anything?”

“Do you remember the title I gave you? Exactly?”

Vex wracks her brain. “Baroness of Whitestone– mistress of something, blah blah blah– honestly dear I have you to keep track of the ridiculously long names.”

“Lady Vex'ahlia, Baroness of the Third House of Whitestone, Grand Mistress of the Grey Hunt.”

Vex smiles, because he recites it in the same dry and matter of fact way he always says, “Percival Fredrickstein Von Mussel Klossowski de Rolo III”.

“See?” Vex says. “You know it better than I do.”

“This,” Percy says, waving his hand out over the assembled crowd, “is the Grey Hunt.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It’s a stag hunt. We do it once a year, it’s in– worship of Pellor, commemoration of the first feast held by the settlers in Whitestone, that sort of thing. I did say that once a year you would have to do something ridiculous and– this is it. This is the Grey Hunt and you are its Grand Mistress.”

Vex looks out over the crowd again, recognizing them now for what they are in the flickering torchlight. Hunters, apparently, equipped with bows and spears and draped in colors that would get them seen a mile off in any proper forest. She raises one eyebrow, deeply unimpressed.

“This?” she says. “Is the Grey Hunt? Is what I’m in charge of? Every year?”

“Yes?” Percy says, turning the answer into a question as if it might soften the blow. “When I picked the title I tried to choose one that might… suit your actual skills and interests.”

“If you are playing a joke one me,” Vex warns, turning on Percy and searching his face. He looks perfectly earnest, but if her brother put him up to this she swears she will find out. “I will bury you in the deepest level of the Nine Hells I can dig up.”

“I’m really– I’m really not,” Percy says. Under his cravat his throat bobs. “The Hunt itself may be– well, it’s kind of a joke and kind of a religious festival, and kind of an actual hunt. It’s a tradition that has been held in Whitestone for hundreds of years.”

“Hm,” Vex says. She looks over the gathered crowd with a discerning eye. The people are laughing and joking with one another, suffused with a high key sort of energy that she’s only ever seen in Whitestone at Winter’s Crest. “It’s not very Grey, is it?”

“It’s not,” Percy agrees. He looks, pleadingly, at her. Vex can’t resist him when he crooks his eyebrows at her like that, like he desperately needs her help but is too lordly to just come straight out and ask for it. “If it helps anything, as Lord of Whitestone, I’ll be going out there with you. You’ll be leading the charge of course, but I’ll– help as I can.”

Vex does grin at that. She could get used to the idea of dragging Percy a group of assorted visiting nobility and Whitestone peasantry through the underbrush for a day. “Actually, that does help.”

“Good,” Percy says, smiling benignly, “because there’s a costume.”


End file.
